Over the coming years the economic importance of water will continue to increase for a number of reasons:  Global demand for water is soaring. To meet this demand, a whole range of water services needs to be expanded and made to operate more efficiently;  To meet the current challenges, enormous investments are required to upgrade and expand the water infrastructure; For poorer and rapidly growing nations in particular, new technologies need to be developed for treating, distributing and using water;     It is unlikely that water can be made available for all applications in the future at the same low cost as it is today. If the price of water does increase due to supply bottlenecks, this will have dramatic consequences for all areas of our lives that essentially depend on water. These areas include virtually all of society’s commercial activities, from agriculture through to the production of everyday consumer goods. Companies that identify these changes at an early stage and subsequently take steps to exploit the resulting opportunities will be better positioned in the market and will achieve greater commercial success.